There Is Only One Of Us Here

There is this idea of a thing called the "Collective Unconscious", which was introduced by a psychiatrist named Carl Jung in the early 1900's. I find it fascinating. He proposes that there is this idea of a personal unconscious, which is a sort of reservoir of experience that is unique to each individual. It's that weird, underlying place in your brain that is responsible for things like dreams and deja vu and those gut reactions that who knows where they come from. Then, he says, there is also a collective unconscious, which is NOT unique to individuals but is inherent in all of us and is, at it's base level, universally the same in all of us. So he's saying that for all people (or things with souls, if you want to go there), there is a collective sameness in our psyches...that maybe, underneath our individuality and all the nuances that make us unique people, we've all got the same baseline thoughts and motivations and survival strategies. It's like a giant invisible cord or web that connects every person on the planet. I love it. I love individuality and I love diversity and I love that all humans are made of basically all the same parts...2 eyes, 2 ears, a nose, a neck, two legs....but the subtle differences in the way those things are put together make us all look completely different. I find that amazingly beautiful. So different and so much the same.

Then some spiritual teachers go even further than the idea that we're all linked by a similar nature. They go to the point of saying that at the most basic part, we are all exactly the same. Seven billion people. We are all exactly the same. There is only one of us here on this planet.

I have no idea if I agree with that idea or not. I don't need to agree or disagree but I think it's a beautiful concept. To be able to look at another person and instead of focusing on the things that are different about us, the things that we disagree on, to decide that in fact, you are not separate from me. That would make all the difference....for all of us, I think.

In her book, My Stroke of Insight, Jill Bolte Taylor writes about her experience having a stroke and describes what it was like to be functioning with only the right hemisphere of her brain. And she was a neuroscientist, so she has a really interesting perspective. Anyway, in the book she says this, "As members of the same human species, you and I share all but one hundredth of one percent of identical genetic sequences. So biologically, as a species, you and I are virtually identical to one another at the level of our genes. And there's only one hundredth of one percent difference, and that is what makes all the difference." That emphasis is mine but SERIOUSLY PEOPLE, all we can focus on are the minuscule things that make us different?

I've been going through some massive life changes lately. I'm learning about a billion new lessons daily, and I honestly realize the older I get, the less I really know. And that makes me a much better person. Some lessons come the hard way and some of them float nicely into my consciousness without too much struggle. But I'll tell ya what, the process of becoming a more authentic version of oneself is a painful process. Showing up and being real and allowing myself to be seen, really seen by people feels terrifyingly brave on a minute by minute basis. But it is necessary in order to have life, to be fully alive, to be LIVING instead of just NOT DYING. But it's raw and it's scary and to everyone else, a person being more authentic can just look different. You're acting differently, you're speaking differently, you're existing differently. And those things are scary because most of us surround ourselves with people who are mostly the same as we are. There's comfort in that, and it's not only societal, it's human nature.

I certainly have no answer for how to solve this problem. I'm not even sure that I'm suggesting it IS a problem...it's just how things are. But here's what I am suggesting: Love covers differences. Love stands in the gaps; those minuscule gaps that we train ourselves and our kids to see and to enlarge into barriers. And I'm not talking about love that floats out in space as this happy little conceptual idea. That kind of love says "Sure, I love you, as a feeling or a thought, but I don't really know how to love you, how to speak to you, how to show up, so I'm going to keep a safe distance". That doesn't cover differences, it's a response to differences and there's not a lot of vulnerability there. I'm talking about hands-on, feet in the trenches, dirty face, actual, practical, active love. That kind of love says, "I will do life with you. I will hear you out and I won't judge. Instead I'll use my energy to show compassion and meet your needs". And I think that's the only way we'll ever be able to know the hearts of the people who look or behave or believe differently than us. This is not a new or earth-shattering idea. I'm not that smart. It's been around for thousands of years and brilliant people have been teaching it since teaching was a thing. Buddha wasn't a Buddhist. Jesus wasn't a Christian. Muhammad wasn't a Muslim. They were teachers who taught love.

Brilliant.

Love was their religion.

And if those three met each other today, I think they'd sit down together at a rustic farm table, pour out some Guiness or some fair trade tea, and notice each others differences. They would notice, they would respect, and they would love. Hell, they might even TALK OPENLY about their differences. Horror of horrors. Love would stand in the gaps. What an outrage. And that would be their common ground...outraging those around them by having the audacity to actively love people who are different. Gosh I want to be their friend.

This feet-in-the-trenches love is something that I've never been good at. Like I said, it requires vulnerability and that's not something that I've ever been comfortable with but I'm trying it out for the first time. And guess what? It's not killing me! It's opening me up and I'm grateful for that. I'm grateful for the discovery that hey, there's only one of us here. There is no separation between you and I. We're the same. We're a couple of spirits trying to navigate our way through a rough world and we're both just doing our best. Cheers to that. To individuality and to the blessed sameness.



Ps...I'm also grateful for the bravery of these girls and their words. Crushing the differences and robbing stereotypes of their power. Amen.

Life lessons from swings and dark places

     I had a conversation with my four-year-old daughter the other day that was so enlightening to me. I had been at work during the day and I came home while my mom was playing outside with the kids. The boys were filthy and happy and bopping around the back yard but I could see that Ella was upset about something. She came and sat next to me while I tried to comfort her and to understand what was wrong. We were sitting close to my mom who explained to me that Ella had taken a sort of nasty fall off of her swing just a minute before I pulled in the driveway. Ella continued not to talk so I just assumed that she was embarrassed because of falling and I snuggled her a little bit and then let it go. About an hour later, after my mom had left and things were calm Ella climbed into my lap and said she was ready to tell me why she had been in a funk earlier. She said, "I fell off my swing and I fell right down onto my face and it really hurt."
     "Ok", I said. "I bet that did hurt and I'm so sorry about that. But Grandma asked you what was wrong and you wouldn't tell her. And I asked you what was wrong and you wouldn't tell me either. You need to use words to explain to us what's going on so that we can help you."
     "I just didn't want Grandma to worry about me," she said. I paused to try to understand why that mattered to her.
     "Well honey, people only worry about you because they care about you. How would you feel if you told Grandma that you got hurt and she said she didn't care? When someone loves you they never want to see you hurt or upset. It's hard for them."
     And then she kicked my ass.
 
     "But I just wanted her to let me be hurt and upset."

     Yes. I got it.
 
     Don't we all? Don't we all need that from the people we love sometimes? For them to just allow us to feel the hurt that we feel without trying to make it better, without the bright side, without us having to worry about what our own feelings will do to theirs? We don't need our people to be "strong" enough to handle us and handle our low points. We just need them to be ok enough and human enough to sit in our dark places with us and not be afraid and not scurry around to turn on the light because it feels safer that way. Please don't try to pick me up. Just lay down next to me and remind me that I'm not alone. Love me in this place the same way you loved me when I was feeling more whole, when I was a little easier to love. Lay down next to me...maybe not forever, but maybe just for as long as it takes me to learn to love myself in this place, to love myself through this trial.

     Sometimes, there are trials through which we simply cannot love the people we should or wish we could. I have had to let go of my own father because his level of toxicity was too much for me to bear and it began to rob me of my own health. It is the great sadness of my life that I don't really have a dad even though he's alive and we live in the same city, but what's more, that I couldn't find a way to love him in his dark place. And this has become a learned behavior for me. I am a person who can sense a needy person from four thousand miles away. I have sensors for this that have become hardwired into my nerve endings. If you begin to expect and demand too much from me, more than I think I can give, my red flags are ding, ding, dinging up ALL over the place. And then I will cut you off, freeze you out, and shut myself down just to protect my own well-being.

     I know now, that that only happens because I have a terribly hard time loving myself. I don't care if that sounds cliche, it is the absolute truth. And if you're nodding your head right now, it's likely that it is the truth for you as well. Some of us, if we were not loved well growing up, have not learned to love ourselves well in adulthood. There is always a little something inside us that tells us we are (for some unknown but deeply understood reason) unworthy of love and belonging. I am like a starving child over there in the corner and if you come at me asking me to share my lunch with you, an abundance which I certainly do not have to give (I can't even feed myself), I will cut you off, freeze you out, and shut myself down because can't you see I'm starving over here??

     This past year, I have taken a trip to hell and back...actually I'm not sure if I'm back yet but I am definitely stumbling along the rugged path. And it wasn't until I was in the place where I was asking my people to share their lunch with me, to love me in my dark place, that I learned how to give that love as well...to others AND to myself. I fell off my swing and slammed into the ground face-first and I needed to just sit with someone who would allow me to to be hurt and upset. And some of my people couldn't do it. I understand why because I have been that person and I have felt those red flags. But some people have absolutely blown me away with their ability to show love and compassion and to keep showing up even when I don't seem to be getting better. They have taught me how to love others and to love myself and I am so deeply and wholly thankful for those people that I don't even know what to do with it all.

     The thing is, I'll always be a wreck...in some form or another. That's just me and that's ok. The closet of self-improvement is a lonely place to be. I'm done with that. I'm just loving myself right here right now and showing up for life AS IS. And then, miraculously, that is the place where self-improvement happens. Who knew??

     I'm so grateful to be learning this lesson. I'm so grateful that I can be the kind of mom who allows my kids to be hurt and upset and struggling and confidently tell them that that's ok baby, I love you right here. Your confusion doesn't scare me, your mistakes don't make me uncomfortable, our disagreement on this subject doesn't negate my love for you one bit. I'm in it with you and FOR you no matter what knee you scrape or what your life ends up looking like. It is such a gift to be able to love myself this way and love my kids and other people this way. I've had some excellent teachers. None of them are perfect, they're all human and stumbling along their own rugged paths. And this is what I hope to show my kids. I want them to say, "she was human and she let it show and she never withheld love when I was human too."

     Thanks Ella, for showing me that it's ok to face-plant and to feel hurt for as long as necessary until I'm ready to get back on my swing again. The swing is worth it.

Life is Brutiful

I read a book a while ago called "Carry On, Warrior" by a woman named Glennon Doyle Melton. She also has a blog that's fantastic. If you are a human being and you find yourself having a hard time adjusting to life on this planet, do yourself a favor and read her stuff. She's one of the brilliant people I've found this past year who is helping me to get healthy in my head. And if you know me, you know that's one hell of an expedition.

So Glennon, she writes a lot about living in the "and/both". She says that a lot of people believe very deeply that things have to be "either/or", black or white, right or wrong, good or bad. But sometimes, LOTS of times, life and people are just so AND/BOTH. Yesterday was a glaring example that this is my truth. I am and/both.

I was at the hospital for a birth from noon on Monday to 2pm on Tuesday. This is and/both. I was very excited that one of my clients was going to be welcoming her baby into the world a few weeks early and I was elated to be able to be there with her and to support her. But by 3am, I'd say  both of our excitement was waning. She was strong and steadfast...I was exhausted. But I rallied and she was amazing and she birthed a beautiful baby boy the next day around 1pm. Being a doula is exceptionally gratifying AND very difficult. I mean, come on. I get to see people welcome their babies into the world. My job is to literally witness miracles. And people PAY me for it! That is ridiculous. I KNOW that I am doing what I'm supposed to be doing with my life because I come alive when I do it. Also, it's rough. It can be really physically demanding...during any given birth, I am often doing some form of rubbing, holding, pressing, lifting, jamming, shoving, or bending any part or whole of a woman. It's emotionally demanding...I respond to very different individuals in their most vulnerable moments with whatever they need most at that time. I may have to be comforting or stern, respectful but blatant, or reassuring, or soothing, or calming, or encouraging, or confident, or ALL of the above within the span of a few hours depending on what the situation demands. It's hard on my schedule because it's totally unpredictable. When I say goodbye to my kids, I have no idea how long it will be until I see them again. It's sometimes hard to piece together childcare. It's hard to have more than one glass of wine at any given dinner if I have a client on the calendar for any time that month. I mean come on, you gonna mess with my wine? You BETTER be having a baby. And it is tiring. I'm up for days at a time sometimes with a laboring mama and the difference between her and I (well, one of many) is that I don't have any awesome hormones coursing through my body enabling me to do hard work. But I've got love, and I've got a responsibility to a woman, and I've got determination not to let her down. My work is AND/BOTH. I love it deeply, AND it's rough at 3am. I am weary and drained of all my physical and emotional reserves AND in that moment I get to watch a woman hold her new born baby to her chest and they look at one another like they know each other so well and are still quite fascinated to be finally meeting. Both of those things peacefully coexist in the same space.

So yesterday after I left the hospital, I went home to relieve my mom from watching my kids. My plan was to let them watch TV until their brains completely rotted through so that I could sleep on the couch because I hadn't slept since the previous night. And about one minute into executing my awesome plan, I remembered that I had signed the twins up for a gymnastics class and their first class was happening in like an hour. Lawd have mercy. Ok. "Get you head in the game, Sam", I said to myself. I convinced myself to rally once again and get the kids ready and out the door to a full-filled new experience. Because my brain was at the point where it was figuratively shitting the bed, I had forgotten that new experiences are NEVER fun-filled for my kids. Maybe it's because I'm kind of a coddler or because they've never done daycare, or just due to their personalities, but they FREAK out when trying new things. So I totally forgot to dread this new experience and I got everyone into athletic clothes and out the door. When we got to gymnastics, I stopped into the office to let them know it was our first class and we were clueless. The office person told us we'd be with Miss Katie, or whatever her name was. She seemed adorably sweet so I reassured the kids that she would take good care of them and we got their coats and boots off and ready for class. They were both tentative but because I had zero compassion coursing through my veins at that moment, I told them to get THEIR heads in the game and get onto the floor. They each were crying as they walked out to do some stretching on a carpet square and I quietly asked if the universe could just do me a solid here and please help keep them calm. And THEN the adorably sweet teacher girl stood up and EXITED the floor and was replaced by a muscular, stern-faced, middle-aged MAN who began showing stretches to the kids and my kids LOST. IT. The other children in the class were unfazed as they pointed and flexed their little toes but both my kids turned around and ran out to me literally screaming and crying. As if he had just walked out there and bashed each of their heads with a baseball bat. They gripped my legs and clung to me as if their lives depended on it. And this scene was witnessed by no less than 50 other moms. I had no patience. I had no grace. I told them to stop their crying and get back out there. This was one of those times that I definitely should have said ANYTHING other than what I really thought but I just had no filter. They cried uncontrollably and I just sat there watching them and telling them I didn't feel bad, there was nothing wrong, and cry me a river, whatever, but get back out there! Not my best parenting moment. And I knew in my mind that ALL those other sweet, calm, moms were watching me and cringing at my lack of any human emotion and totally judging me and feeling sad for my kids that they had such a tyrant of a woman as their mother. And I seriously did not even care. A real low point. I sat there while they cried the kind of cries where they cannot even catch their breath and I just wagged my finger in their faces telling them to get over it and I thought I would have to either carry them out there by the scruffs of their necks, or completely fail and just take them home. But then came my second miracle of the day. One of the moms went out to the gym floor, fetched her son, brought him back to where I was angrily sitting with my wailing children, and helped him to ask Brett and Ella if they would like to go with him to bounce on the trampoline. Then the heavens parted and the angels sang, and B & E each wiped away their own tears and nodded a tentative yes to this kind little boy. And off they went to be with their class.  I looked at that mom from my spot on the floor with Levi still clinging to me and I dropped one dramatic tear and mouthed "thank you" from the bottom of my weary busted heart.

I mean this woman was thin and well-dressed and she was perfectly type cast for my brain-story of all the perfect, snotty, judgey moms throwing stones around me. I raggedly told her about how this is the third sport we've tried and I can't get my kids to stop crying through everything and I'm so tired of being the coddling mom and I'm so TIRED because I haven't slept in two days and I'm just not sure I'm doing anything right as a mother. And she hugged me and looked me in the eye and told me she had been there and was still often there. Then every other mom of every other kid in their class reassured me that they knew how I felt and that we are all positive that we're failing as parents. Seriously, it came right out of a Hallmark movie, people I cannot make this stuff up. Just when I was sure that I was awful and so were the people around me, they had compassion and came to my rescue. Yes, I was kind of rotten to my kids. Yes, I'm so freekin sick of them being scared of everything. I'm so freekin sick of ME being scared of everything. And yes, people can be mean and nasty but people are more often kind and caring and helpful and beautiful. And that was a really good reminder for me.  Brett and Ella never looked back at me for the whole class. They bounced, they flipped, they hung and spun and jumped and smiled for the entirety of the hour. THIS is and/both.

Gosh it was a really exhausting day. But I'm learning that you can only win when you are vulnerable. You've got to fall in order to prove that you can get back up. You've got to care for others and you've got to sometimes let yourself be cared for. I'm tired because I felt dogged and ragged and rescued and rejuvenated. I'm tired because it takes a lot of energy to be emptied out and then filled back up again. But this is life. It's not either/or.

Life is Brutal.  And life is beautiful. Life is brutiful.

Thank you, Glennon for teaching me that that's ok.